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North Korea as seen on Instagram

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This article was taken from the December 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online.

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The world's most restrictive country has loosened up since Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder first visited in 2000 -- he now posts images from the Pyongyang bureau on to Instagram. wired asked him for his report from inside. "In a country known for its censorship, I'm now uploading photos to Instagram from the streets of North Korea as I would anywhere else in the world. "Through social media, I'm trying to piece together a picture of this country for the outside world, whether it's a still of an apartment building with an empty playground, a geotag for Juche Tower on Foursquare, or a video of a woman ringing up restaurant receipts with propaganda blaring behind her. "No one puts their hand in front of my camera, and no one tells me not to shoot things. There's no review process. They don't look at my pictures at all before I send them on the Associated Press wire or my Instagram account. Facebook even asks me to tag my

'friends' Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung when I upload my photos. "Until a few months ago, the Google map of North Korea was a blank slate. Now I'm like an explorer, charting the country with my check-ins and photos. The first time I tried to tag a picture on Instagram, there were no preset locations. Now we're making those too. I'm doing it because I want the geolocators for Instagram, but I'm also doing it in the spirit of an explorer or a mapmaker."